Birds of a Feather Flock Together

I travel for people...

Its been an incredible blessing to be surrounded with some of my favorite people in the entire world this summer. Just to give you the correct image - I have about three incredibly precious friends from when I lived in Madrid that I am still close to today. Two of the four, I lived with at an apartment on a street called Rios Rosas. Cande, one of those roommates was my roommate nearly the entire time I lived in Madrid. Cande now lives about two streets over from where we used to live, and she lives with another Argentinian, who happened to apply to a program in Paris for the month of July. So, like something perfectly designed by the stars, I am living in her roommate's room and we are roommates again. Cande is leaving to return to Argentina in August and so I will be her first and last roommate while she lived in Madrid for three years. Wow, it gives me chills. 
The other one of those two, Gabriel, was in Madrid to complete his masters and now he works back in Brazil for Google (no big deal). I have been incredibly lucky to see Gab in Los Angeles last May, and to see Cande in Barcelona in October. But the three of us haven't been together since 2012. Until last Saturday. It was an epic reunion, and I want to cry just thinking about how incredibly beautiful and sweet it was to be reunited, in our city, at our favorite restaurants, discussing our favorite things. To add icing on the cake, Cande's boyfriend and my boyfriend were also there basking in the happiness and hearing some of our greatest adventures. Wow. 
The third, Melania, who I visited in Rome in October comes to Spain in another week. 
Other than arranging my living situation, Gab and Melania is completely coincidence and God's plan being far better than mine. 
I just LOVE it when a plan comes together better than in my wildest dreams. 
Through these great people, I have continued to meet more great people who are like minded and like-hearted. People who love the world and love the people in it. We've had great discussions over Rioja over the future, the gray areas, and hot-topic debates. It further reminds me that I travel for the people I have the privilege of sharing the travels with. I travel for those who travel with me, and for those I meet along the way. 

Gab and I at our old metro stop home

Brian and I at Retiro, Madrids equivalent of Central Park

REUNION

If its love, and we decide that its forever; no one else can do it better

If its love, and we are two birds of a feather 

and the rest is just whatever

We can be them, two birds of a feather that flock together.

Love, love, got to have something to keep us together. 

Love- that's enough for me. 

We can travel to Spain, 

it sounds insane, cause it is. 

We can laugh, we can sing, have ten kids and give them everything. 

Love, love, got to have something to keep us together. 

-If Its Love, Train

Navigating the chaos of tarmacs and baggage claim

Its been ages since I've had one spare second to write a post. I am finally back into the swing of law school and actually feel like I am a student again. The first weeks here were whirlwinds and it was all I could do to get myself out of bed and to where I was supposed to be, managing to read about 50% of what was expected from me. But get prepared for a series of great posts!

I went to Copenhagen with five fellow law students at Pepperdine who are also spending the semester in London. There was a spectrum of travel experience, ranging from one friend who has been to over 30 countries to one friend who landed in country #3 upon our arrival in Denmark. I can never appropriately reiterate how blessed I've been not only to travel as much as I have, and that most of that travel has been throughout Europe. Copenhagen has been somewhere I really wanted to go for quite some time and it did not disappoint. 

The highlights of the weekend were a canal tour through the city and endless wandering on accident because many canals left us at dead ends. 

In an outpouring of God's goodness, my boyfriend was offered a job in London next summer and they flew him out here for the weekend. We had a chance to do a few touristy things I hadn't done since I was in London a year ago. As he poetically point it, we took "a mile wide instead of an inch deep" approach, but had a lovely stroll from the Tower of London all the way past Parliament and Big Ben. It was wonderful to have him here and this whole long distance thing is old. Although it is not the end of our long distance chapters, as I have already accepted a job for next summer in Los Angeles and he accepted the offer to work here in London. The phrase "when you plan, God laughs" has never been more poignant. I'm so proud of him and thrilled for his incredible opportunity. 

Brian spoiled me by taking me to a sushi restaurant on the 38th floor of a building in the city center for our 1 year anniversary dinner. 

My schedule has never been crazier. Law school is no joke, and I am still expected to read about 100 pages of cases (tough reading) per day, plus working for a law firm, plus juggling any other responsibilities and expectations. Then I am traveling every three or four days to some places I've already been, and new lands I haven't yet seen. I get that not everyone would choose this lifestyle - the jetsetting, navigating the chaos of tarmacs and baggage claim. But I have no post code envy,  I love what I am doing, I love where I am at and I wouldn't have it any other way. It's likely that I will hit fifteen countries this year alone. I'm amazed at what I am learning, and its my sincere intention of carving out more time to tell you about it. 

As always, thanks for reading. 

Two Muzungus I couldn't have done without

My Favorite People II

The first person I must talk about is, my housemate and companion 24/7, Carmen. To most people we interact with, it is shocking that Carmen and I just met. In fact, about 60 days ago, we were complete strangers. Now, we could write the other's autobiography. Carmen claims Ohio as home, but she also grew up as a missionary kid in Costa Rica and Venezuela. She has been an absolute delight to get to know and to spend time with. As we work together, live together and walk everywhere, we spend almost every waking moment of the day together. Not only have I never wanted to kill her, but I have never even been annoyed with Carmen in the slightest. This is remarkable considering how annoying I know I can be. Seriously, Carmen has a huge heart for the world, a strong and beautiful burning spirit for Christ and is incredibly dedicated to being great at whatever she does (which she does effortlessly). Clearly she and her fiance are guided by God because they are getting married just seven days after we get back to the United States. For this alone, she may be a bit crazy, but she is just crazy about following the call to do good work, which is exactly what she's been doing in Rwanda. I am amazed by her zeal, her ability to laugh at just about anything, the fact that she never complains, her intelligence, and the wonderful stories she has to tell. I think it's pretty cool that two very well traveled Spanish speakers ended up in Rwanda hanging out. Our first weeks in Rwanda all we did was exchange travel stories. Although we've both been to over twenty countries, we have only actually been to the same two or three countries, excluding Rwanda. I think that's pretty remarkable! I am pleased that I will be her last roommate before she is married, and I hope that she would say the same about me. What a bright future lies ahead of her, I can't wait to see where she ends up and whether or not she will hire me. ;) If we hadn't gotten along, my summer would have been tremendously miserable. But because we got along so well, my summer was greatly enhanced.

Shelley - Shelley left Rwanda two weeks ago but we miss her so much that it feels like she's been gone a month. Shelley first really amazed me in the big market called Kimironko. We were trying to decide how much we should pay for a pineapple. She picked it up, said about how much she guessed it weighed in pounds, stated about what the average price per pound of pineapple is in the US, converted pounds to kilos and then converted the price per kilo to Rwandan Francs and then spit out a price that we should pay for the pineapple that would be reasonable. Maybe this is lost on you, but this amazed me. Not only do I not know the price of any single item in a grocery store, I certainly could not convert dollars and pounds in a few seconds and then use it as an effective negotiation tool to then haggle over the price of a pineapple in Kinyarwanda which none of us speak. Shelley is so many things that I am not. She's athletic, humble, incapable of sitting for more than five minutes, gracious, and patient. But like me, she is always hungry for a little adventure. Shelley arrived in Rwanda a few weeks before Carmen and I so her first weeks trials became our knowledge. I will always be grateful to her and Lauren for showing us the ropes of living in Kigali and for being our friends in a city when we had none. The icing on the cake of Shelley's awesomeness is her beautiful heart for God and her receptiveness to where He is leading her.  She always had us laughing and she was usually our fearless leader for any activity. At least once a day someone in the house says "I miss Shelley." I am already looking forward to us hanging out in Malibu in January!

That's what you get for waking up in Africa

                       

After being here about three weeks, you wake up with absolutely no expectations.

You wake up not knowing if the water will be turned on, if you will have power, if what you think you are doing all day is what you’re actually going to be doing all day.

You feel dirty all the time, even though Kigali is by far the cleanest city I have ever been in.

You wake up and dive straight into the obstacles to life here, even though you have an impenetrable advantage as a rich Westerner.

And all this got me thinking, “Why should I wake up in the morning and expect the water to run? Why should I wake up without the expectations of encountering anything outside of my own selfish little Stephanie Brown agenda? Should I not instead, wake up hoping that all those things work and be overcome with joy when I am allowed to go about my own plans? Ah, yes, perhaps I should reverse my thinking, and be grateful for absolutely every single thing.

Thursday, the power was out at the office literally about 95% of the working day. I did not hear a single complaint of any kind. I don’t know what other staff did, but Carmen and I sat at our desks for a while reading our books, talking with the other staff sitting at their dead desks nearby. I sat outside and read my Bible for about an hour. I’m not sure what this scenario would have looked like in LA, but I know it would have involved complaining, panic, chaos, laptops alive until their battery juice was gone, phone calls to complain to those in the position to bring back the power, and likely more panic. I didn’t see any of these things. Because this is a common occurrence, it’s simply part of life – the unexpected is expected. It is to be embraced. We were told we could go home, but we didn’t. We didn’t feel productive at all, but we were. Just not in the way we had anticipated.

Friday, again, there was about a two-hour stint without power. But that morning, when my computer was lit and buzzing, my fingers typed away, and I realized, this was likely the first time I’ve ever gone to turn on the computer and whispered “Oh, thank you!” that I could turn it on.

Let me tell you, what its like to live in Africa and appreciate the smallest, tiniest things.

I miss my microwave. Yes, you read that line correctly: I miss my microwave. I’ve never lived without a microwave, heated up food on a stove or in an oven every single time I want something warmed.

Killing any mosquito is a victory of epic proportions, worthy of at least 30 seconds of celebration. Killing the mosquito that magically entered the mosquito net as you climbed into bed, before actually beginning to fall asleep to her buzzing noise in your ear- now, this is the National Championship of victories.

All of the children on the street yell out, “Umuzungu!” as we walk by. This simply means, “white person.” And I’ve gotten use to it. What I haven’t gotten use to is the staring, the gawking, their eyes so interested in me and what I am doing as a muzungu in their country. Everywhere we go we hear the whispers, speculations, and comments in the groups nearby: “asdfksdflkjasdfj muzungu aslkdfjasldfjsf” is becoming a hum that I hear at all times. Many of the children will come up and say, “give me money.” I miss blending in. I miss being lost in a crowd. I miss no one caring who I am, wondering why I am walking where I am walking. I miss everyone around me too self-absorbed to notice me, much less call me out and talk about me three inches from my nose. Mototaxis honk as we walk by, and will even screech up an inch or two away and make a “tssss” sound to see if we want to hop on. This irks me to no end. I’m just walking along, minding my business, what makes them think that if I didn’t call them over in the first place, that I would suddenly think, “Oh yes! I suddenly really want to hop on your moto!” To put this awkward muzungu-status into perspective, at an ENGLISH-speaking church this morning of about 1,000 people, I counted six white people. SIX.

I miss water pressure. The water here trickles out at about the speed of the tap that you would get if you barely turned the handle at all. I have just learned how to effectively wash my hair in the most finite of streams of water. Standing in the plaster plate on the ground with a skimpy shower curtain circling on only one side opposite the faucet, this is showering, and it due to a solar-power water heater is certainly always one of the highlights of my day (a hot shower and communicating with my favorite people as the internet counts away, we pay per megabyte for internet usage).

Maybe the store a few blocks away will be open, maybe it won’t. Maybe it will have the milk that you just ran out of, maybe it won’t. Maybe the road you always walk on will be open, but maybe it will be closed and you’ll have to walk an entirely new route. Maybe the most reliable coffee shop for internet will have coffee, maybe it won’t, maybe the internet will never connect and maybe you have walked a mile there in the afternoon heat for absolutely no reason that you intended to justify such a hot, grueling walk. Maybe after playing charades with one our workers for about 15 minutes, they will have understood what we intended and maybe we will walk away not having communicated anything that we anticipated at all.

A box of cereal costs about $10. Cheese is also around $10. Bread is made without any preservatives and so it gets moldy in about three days. 

In all my travels, I’ve never had so many problems with my phone working. I’ve never encountered such a barrier to getting cash out of an ATM. I’ve never been somewhere for three weeks without seeing a single clothing store. This is the first country I’ve been to without any fast food chain.

That’s what you get for waking up in Africa (intended to be read in the tune of Katy Perry’s song).

And, I get to dust the glitter off my clothes and do it all over again tomorrow. The intensity of gratification I have for the smallest of these things will fade, it always does. But it’s going to last longer this time. I am determined to sustain the gratitude.

Three weeks down, six weeks to go.

“Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place;

maybe you had to travel to figure out

how beloved your starting point was.” –Jodi Picoult, Handle With Care